Comments on: Tough times ahead for NASA astronomy missions?

By: Dave Cadman

Dave Cadman — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 21:07:57 +0000

this may be stupid, so don’t jump over it; but what about getting some of the bigger universities that are active in astronomy/astrophysics, to take over operation and use of these obsolete and near obsolete space telescopes, to train the next generation; while the observations may not be at the cutting edge, there is still value in doing them if it can bring new blood up to speed; and there is still the chance something of use could be found; amateur astronomers on the ground are still making contributions to astronomy ; ie the guy that spoted the strike on Jupiter in 2009

By: Doug Lassiter

Doug Lassiter — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:23:48 +0000

No surprise here. While JWST is eating the lunch of the astronomers, this upcoming dearth of missions is largely a result of the cuts that Griffin made to SMD, in propping up his Constellation program. Those outyear cuts kept new science missions from ever being being started, such that the pipeline is drying out. That fewer missions are coming out of the pipe is because several years ago, fewer missions were put in.

One wonders how things might be different if SOMD did regular senior reviews of their current missions, assessing whether we’re really getting value out of them.

By: NASA Fan

NASA Fan — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:07:23 +0000

NASA Missions are over designed. And once having spent upwards of $800M for a mission, it is very difficult to end them when yearly mission operations costs are in the few millions (excluding the Great Observatories) and they are still returning useful data.